RETRO

RETRO is a modern, pragmatic Forth drawing influences from many sources.

Features:

• Open Source (ISC License)
• Portable (runs on a MISC-style virtual machine)
• Small source & binaries
• Builds into a single, self contained binary for easy deployment
• Sources in literate format, using a Markdown variant

The language is a Forth dialect drawing influence from some of Chuck Moore's newer ideas. It's clean, elegant, tiny, and easy to grasp and adapt to various uses.

Quick Start

For FreeBSD, NetBSD, macOS, Linux:

./build

Binaries will be found in the bin directory. The ones of interest are:

rre

Short for run retro and exit, this is the primary interface for RETRO. The rre interface is used to run the examples and Atua Gopher and HTTP servers that power forthworks.com.

rre embeds the RETRO image into the binary, making it trivial to copy and deploy.

repl

This is a basic read-evaluate-print-loop for interactive use. It's intended for quick tests and as an easy starting point for new interfaces. The repl interface looks for the RETRO image (ngaImage) in the current working. If not found, this will use an embedded copy.

listener

Wrapping a shell script, some RETRO code, and using the rre interface, this is a slightly nicer alternative to the basic repl for interactive use.